8560E Series - How to capture screen under "zero-span"

Hi, I tried to capture the screen with KE5FX toolkit and with a Prologix GPIB-USB card. They work fine for spectrum displays, but when the SA is set to zero-span to display time-domain waveform, all I can capture is an empty screen with graticule and markings, but no trace. I was wondering if the signal is not digitized under zero-span? Thanks.

I would start by confirming that the 8560E is sending the zero-span trace in the HPGL stream.

Use KE5FX to acquire and save the HPGL commands in a .PLT file and then look at the .PLT file in a text editor. HPGL is ASCII and it should be obvious which HPGL command is doing the actual trace plot. It should start with "PA", followed by a long string of X,Y coordinates which dictate how the pen should move to make the trace.

If the line looks like it's in the plot file, try a different HPGL viewer.

If it's not, use some of the low level GPIB utilities in KE5FX like PARSE, TALK, LISTEN, QUERY, to further see what the 8560E is sending in response to a plot command.

Indeed, the problem is associated with the lacking of option 007. I set the zero-span sweep time to 30 ms and was able to capture the trace, nice and sharp (please see attached picture). Any sweep time shorter than 30 ms will render the screen "flickering", and I figured out that the instrument is doing real-time sweeping, just like a traditional CRT oscilloscope.

Suppose I'd like to add option 007 to it, will installing a A16 FADC board do the job? Or, do I have to poke the memory a bit to add "007" identification? Thank you.

Attachments

Attached is the installation note that was used when an option 007 upgrade kit was still available. It has the instructions on how to install the option along with a list of required parts. I notice in it you must also have an A3 Interface board assembly that supports this option. From what I can see if the instrument is serial prefix 3517A or newer the existing A3 should be fine.

You also need to enable the option via remote control. The installation note references a program to do so, which can be found in a few different forms at: http://www.keysight.com/find/8560_software